words Manijeh Verghese

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Amid the glassy
modernism and old stone buildings that populate the Berlin cityscape, the new
Science Center for Medical Technology by Gnadinger Architekten joins the ranks
of recent projects that merge architecture and science. These include Zaha
Hadid’s Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg (icon 027 and icon 029) and the
CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Madrid by Esteve and Robert Terredas. The building doubles as the
Berlin headquarters of Otto Bock Healthcare. An exhibition space, several
conference rooms and a larger space for interdisciplinary discourse relating to
the orthopedic profession are housed within a dramatic aluminium and glass
facade.

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The company’s focus
is on the design of technical mobility aids and prostheses. Central to the
science centre program is an exhibition explaining human motion. Drawing on
this, the overall design concept for the building was drawn from human muscles
fibres. The facade is comprised of a series of convex and concave banded strips
that peel away from one another to create apertures to the interior.
Prosthetics aim to simulate natural motion, so the harmony between nature and
technology is also intrinsic to the brief for this project. The pearl-white
coated, high-gloss aluminium, which forms the banded geometry of the facade,
serves to underline this theme of expressing what is natural through the use of
technology.

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Themes of dynamism
and motion run through the building, manifesting themselves even in an external
light installation along the north and west facades. The 12-metre high “Walker”
reduces the human form into a series of dots, which represent the 15 major joints in
our bodies. The installation shows how the different joints work together while
the variation of the points illustrates the gender, physique and mood of the
walker. The Science Centre of Medical Technology, enclosed within metaphorical
muscle fibres, can be understood as a prosthesis or extension of the Otto Bock
philosophy towards designed mobility – the governing question of “what moves
us?” infiltrates every aspect of this building.

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The
Otto Bock Science Centre of Medical Technology is open to the public
Thursday-Sunday from 10am-6pm

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top image

Concave
and convex bands along the facade evoke human muscle fibres.

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image The
building at night showcases “Walker” – a 12m high light installation.

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image The
exhibition within the Science Centre asks the question “what moves us?”

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All
photos © Otto Bock Healthcare GmbH

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